Out of the bag the Fed springs a nasty little surprise on virtually everyone (except our clients who had been selling in droves as soon as the FTSE broke above 5300!). In hindsight (a truly wonderful tool) we can see that there had been indications from Mr Bernanke last month that the discount rate might be due a move and so we should not have been so surprised. US growth is in the inflation worry range and this really does not sit with rates at …

Nassim Taleb, the author of the Black Swan, has in the last couple of weeks been telling everyone who will listen that shorting US treasuries is a “no brainer” and that “every person on earth should be doing it”.
Well, is it?
We’re quite sceptical.  Not because we dislike with Mr Taleb, who’s a clever man, or because we think that US treasuries are at the moment a steal of a buy.  We’re worried that people are talking about sure things.
Firstly US Treasuries, at least the non-index …

Equity markets are defying the events elsewhere in the financial world as the new levels in the FTSE, Dow et al are held with some ease.
The short term rebound in the Euro failed to even last one session as dealers took one look at the new European deal and decided ‘no thanks’. The Greeks now seemed to have decided that the way forward is to have an enquiry about what went wrong in the past (!?) rather than actually get their hands dirty in cleaning …

The recent bail out of Greece has had a reviving effect on the market, but this does not mean that there are no longer any opportunities out there to benefit from Contracts for Difference or spread bets.
Firstly let’s look at the deal itself, and this is not very solid.  There are three important players in the bail out; Germany, France and the UK.  France is in a generous mood, believing that a bail out is necessary to keep the Euro on the road.  Unfortunately …

Onwards and upwards.  Investors continue to shrug off the bad news and pick up equities with banking stocks leading the way after another stellar round of results from leading European banks.  For now it looks like the 5000 level in the FTSE has well and truly held us up just when there were doubts starting to creep into investors’ minds over the sustainability of the rally.
Once again we’ve seen our price for the FTSE creep up throughout the night as Asian indices put in a …